


Sanctuary Station: The Decepticon's Next Best Hope?

by helloshepard



Series: prowlcoswave [3]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Epistolary, Gen, Multi, News Media, POV First Person, Questionable Journalism, The Big Conversation (Transformers)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24139729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloshepard/pseuds/helloshepard
Summary: Located just outside the planet Jupiter’s orbit, the Deception commune nicknamed Sanctuary station barely qualifies as a pit stop en route to more civilized systems. The Sol System is infamous for both its abundance of Ore-13 and the number of Autobots who call this place home.More recently, it has come under the control of Optimus Prime, whose petition to induct Earth into the Council of Worlds remains tabled as Cybertron deals with the political fallout of the combiner incidents.
Relationships: Pre-Prowl/Cosmos/Soundwave
Series: prowlcoswave [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1633282
Comments: 9
Kudos: 53





	Sanctuary Station: The Decepticon's Next Best Hope?

**Author's Note:**

> A very silly concept ported to a serious AU, aka, how Optimus eventually finds out Prowl is on the station. 
> 
> I did my best to convey a 'journalist except they're a Decepticon MTO who maybe read a style guide once but he's spent his entire journalism career writing listicles so he forgot and bases all of his stylistic choices off his idol's articles' vibe on this one.

**Sanctuary Station: The Decepticons Next Best Hope?**

written by

_Surekill of Operation: Fatal Patrol_

Located just outside the planet Jupiter’s orbit, the Deception commune nicknamed Sanctuary station barely qualifies as a pitstop en route to more civilized systems. The Sol System is infamous for both its abundance of Ore-13 and the number of Autobots who call this place _home._

More recently, it has come under the control of Optimus Prime, whose petition to induct Earth into the Council of Worlds remains tabled as Cybertron deals with the political fallout of the combiner incidents.

The single Decepticon holdout in this tiny, backwater system is Sanctuary Station.

Approaching from orbit, I can’t help but admire how efficiently the weird little Earth fleshlings put the place together. My ‘expertise’ on the matter comes from several visits to Cybertron’s max security brig, where the recently-imprisoned Constructicons volunteered to lend their assistance while I wrote this article in exchange for a discount on a group subscription to _The Big Conversation_. 

Soundwave is there to greet me when I arrive. A former student of the Jhiaxian Academy of Advanced Technology(1) and the longtime Decepticon second lieutenant turned de-facto leader of the Decepticons, Soundwave is significantly smaller in person than I had imagined.

(1) Previous versions of this article incorrectly stated that Soundwave was a graduate of the JAAT.

Soundwave is from Rodion, a pre-war polity that was infamous for the ‘Dead End’. Soundwave dodges my questions about Rodion and the Dead End with practiced ease, and soon enough, we’re heading to the station’s main recreational area.

Soundwave seems genuinely surprised when I tell him most consider him the leader of the Decepticons. In the wide-open rec room that serves dual purposes as both an energon dispensary and a park, Soundwave looks up at me as though I’ve presented him with the Matrix.

I decide to drop it.

The tour is brief—despite its outward appearance, the station is small and its population is even smaller. There are barely twenty mechanisms onboard, though Soundwave assures me that in time, more will come. He confirms my suspicion that I was invited to help get the word out to the Decepticons scattered across the galaxy, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a coincidence that not a moment before, I had been wondering the same thing.

Aside from Soundwave, I’ve never heard of most of these Decepticons. His cassettes are practically as legendary as Soundwave himself, but both Laserbeak and Buzzsaw declined to offer relevant commentary on this piece.

(I did learn some new jokes, though.) (2)

(2) At their insistence:  
**Q: What does a new computer call his creator?**  
A: Data!  
**Q: What's at the bottom of the ocean and shivers?**  
A: A nervous wreck! 

There’s Scalpel of Iacon, a brilliant medic in his own right, though he is often overshadowed by more commonly known doctors such as Flatline and Ratchet (3).

(3) Previous versions of this article failed to note Scalpel’s prominence within the medical field. For those interested in taking a deep dive into Scalpel’s many breakthroughs in the medical field, take a look at his Autopedia entry.

A beastformer by choice, Sky-Byte of Ibex is a neutral who chose to flee the war. I meet him after a poetry(4) reading he had been conducting in the recreational center. I ask him whether he plans to adopt the Decepticon badge. Sky-Byte just laughs.

  
(4)upon request:  
_Frosty outer space  
before energon fires  
watching the blaster_

“Not until _they_ do.”

Sky-Byte is referring to the Autobots. He refers to them as the station’s worst kept secret, but Soundwave simply shakes his head and states that any mechanisms who seek sanctuary are welcome.

One of just two Autobots onboard the station, Cosmos of Helex stands out. Not just because of his size, or the fact that his optics(5) are a stunning, Matrix-adjacent blue, but because I simply have never seen a deep-space alt mode before. Compared to him, Prowl of Petrex(6), the station’s the other Autobot, practically fades into the background.

  
(5) Previous versions of this article incorrectly referred to Cosmos’s optics as Matrix blue.  
(6) Previous versions of this article referred to Prowl of Petrex as ‘the second Autobot’ but was identified by the Constructicons during their examination of the footage taken of the station. Save to correct the aforementioned errors regarding Soundwave's education and Cosmos's optic color, Prowl declined to comment. Previous versions of this article also incorrectly referred to Prowl as Prowl of Praxus, then Prowl of Peptex.

I can’t help but wonder if that’s what he wants.

I ask Cosmos what his first impressions of the station were, and he hesitates. Soundwave, sitting on the other end of the bench, does not.

“He referred to it as a ‘weird ass’ Decepticon space station.”

“…yeah, well it _was_ weird.”

I take a moment to marvel at the fact that in this strange limbo of post-war awkwardness, where the legendary Decepticon Soundwave can be seeing arguing with an Autobot scout. The moment doesn’t last, and sooner rather than later, Cosmos and Soundwave have been redirected to their interview by Prowl, who spares me a nod before going back to his workstation.

Eventually, Soundwave and I are heading down yet another hallway. Soundwave explains that getting mecha to sit down for an interview has been difficult, which I understand— _The Big Conversation_ has only recently begun to experiment with genuine investigative journaling, and I’m not exactly the Cybertronian equivalent of Primax Gimlin IV. If they were to recognize my name at all, most bots would know me from my listicle “10 Fun Podcasts to Pass the Time on an Intersystems Flight”, which was _The Big Conversation’s_ first intergalactically-viral article. Reporters for _The Big Conversation_ have a few centuries of work before we’ll be anywhere close to Primax Gimlin IV’s level.

As my time on Sanctuary Station comes to an end, Soundwave and I spend the next hour going over the surprisingly simple application process.

There’s a brief screening questionnaire to complete before submitting your credentials to a standard background check, conducted by the station’s security team. Soundwave tells me that no-one has been rejected yet.

He seems proud of that fact.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr!](https://soundwavereporting.tumblr.com/) and [twitter!](https://twitter.com/hello_shepard)


End file.
